It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Owen turned one yesterday. One year old. It is so hard for me to beleive this, but here we are with one foot out of babyhood and the other dabbling in toddler. It's sort of surreal and terrifying and wonderful all at once.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to do a year in review, of sorts. Some things I'm proud of, some things I'm not. A recap of year #1.

Taking the wise advice of accentuating the positive, some of the things I'm proud of:

1. we're still cloth diapering and going strong. After the 523rd person told me "that'll last two weeks" when I announced my intention to cloth diaper while pregnant, even I started to doubt whether it would work out. But I'm happy to report that we're not only still happy with our diaper choices, I love that I have never bought a package of huggies.

2. I nursed until 8 months. I am enormously proud of this because it ALMOST KILLED ME. I'll spare you the gory details, but man, did it pretty much suck. I'm glad that I stuck with it though, because I have drunk the breast is best koolaid, and I really wanted to make it until six months. I choose to beleive that Owen will a)care and b) appreciate how difficult it was for me. I am also certain neither is true, but whatever. I'm impressed.

3. Owen has made it to his first birthday without ever watching TV. I'm happy about this because I had a professor in graduate school who terrorized my clinical practice with children class with study after study insinuating tv causes brain damage in children under three. The studies were not peer reviewed and the professor was admittedly unbalanced, not to mention that common sense would disprove this easily, but it scared the bejebus out of me. So I said no tv, and I've managed to stick with it.

4. We made it through a LOT in the past 12 months. When we had the baby I was smack in the middle of a semester of graduate school as well as working full time, Andy was working like a maniac and we were trying to buy a house, ...and things haven't slowed down much since. But we're all still alive, functional (at least, andy and I show up for work every day and Owen hasn't set any neighborhood animals on fire) and I'm really happy about that. It hasn't been easy, but it's getting easier.

5. Owen is a really sweet boy. He tries to hug and kiss everyone that crosses his path and he is, (in my admittedly biased opinion) turning into a genuinely nice little boy.

And now for the things I'm not so proud of:

1. It's much easier to give my kid a cereal bar than actually make him a balanced breakfast, and so I do it pretty often. Like every day. And if I'm being honest, I do it quite often for lunch and dinner as well.
2. I didn't even try to teach him baby sign language.
3. I let him sleep in my bed if he wakes up in the night. In fact, he's slept in my bed about 290 of the last 350 days. I keep setting arbitrary dates when I'm going to stop doing this, but the truth is, I'm full of crap. I am a complete wuss when it comes to crying it out, and I'm not going to do it now or probably ever.
4. Once I took him to the doctor because he had a rash and it turned out he had a 104degree fever and an ear infection in both ears. Whoops.
5. Sometimes my version of "playing" with him involves surfing the internet while occasionally looking over and making interested sounds. And by sometimes I mean, well, a lot.
6. Once, he dumped his whole dinner on the floor, and I was so tired that I just took him out of the high chair, moved him to the floor, and let him finish eating it from there.
7. I am totally unconcerned about germs. If he finds a six week old bite of food under the couch and wants to eat it, that's fine with me. It's very unlikely it will make him sick and I theorize it's good for his immune system. This goes double for anything he finds outdoors.
8. More than once in the first three months I contemplated giving him back, mailing him to Abu Dabi, or trading him for xanax. I'm definitely glad I didn't do any of those things, but I'm not going to pretend it didn't cross my mind.

So it's been a mixed bag, this first year. A little good, a lot stressful, a little terrible, a lot wonderful.

Happy birthday Owen. Mama and Daddy love you so much. We can't wait to explore year 2 with you!